IBM Workplace Forms: Guide to Building and Integrating a Sample Workplace Forms Application

Chapter 5. Building the base scenario: Stage 2 169

Figure 5-2 Overview of major steps involved in building Stage 2 of base scenario application

5.3.2 Web services integration

Web service integration in Workplace Forms content is a specific way to dynamically get hold

of content specific data (as custom object for a selected object) or real time data changing

during the time working in the form (such as actual stock prices or exchange rates). A Web

service integration (for simple cases, which make up more than 90% of all Web service use

cases) is a rather simple task to do, since there are efficient tools available to support Web

service development and implementation.

In a global context, Web services are a convenient method for data exchange between

different systems. In most cases we find here a “request / response” use case. The Web

service consumer submits a request to the provider, and the provider sends a response back.

This works regardless of platform, operating system, and programming languages of both the

service provider and the service consumer, because the used transmission protocol and

internal data structure of the request and response are defined in an independent format, the

Web Service Description Language (WSDL).

Web service integration targets mainly the used form (implementing the Web service calls in

XFDL structure) and the service provider (usually an http/soap proxy server connected to the

data source). So the developed modules are not necessarily related to the application server

dealing with the forms handling. That is why the created provider code is not included in the

Forms application but is available as separate stand-alone applications ready to run on

different servers.

-Creating tables

-Populating

tables

-Form pre-

population

-Extraction of

form data

-Reading form

data from DB2

DB2 / Data

Storage

1

2

3

Servlet

Access to

Forms

Building the Base Scenario – Stage 2

Web

Services

-Common

scenario for

web services

in forms

-Web Service

Development

-Web Service

Runtime

-Modifying

index1.jsp

-Creating

JSP to view

DB2 data

4

Adjustments

to JSPs

-Importing

WSDL file

-Calling Web

Services

5

Form pre-

population w/

Web

Services

6

Approval

Workflow

-Designing

-Workflow